Author Archives: Dustin Volz, Cronkite News Service

WASHINGTON – Lots of states feud with the federal government. But Arizona has become something of a poster child of late.
Gov. Jan Brewer’s finger-wagging tarmac confrontation with President Barack Obama made national news in January. Her subsequent nomination to a Time magazine online poll of the 100 most influential people in the world was evidence, the magazine said, that “Arizona has faced off with the federal government like no other state in recent memory” under her leadership.

Arizona is one of 13 states to turn “hostile” toward abortion rights during the last decade, according to a report Thursday from a national reproductive health organization.
The Guttmacher Institute said Arizona and 12 other states enacted tougher abortion restrictions since 2000, doubling to 26 the number of states it deems “hostile.”

WASHINGTON – A federal court has reinstated a lawsuit against Maricopa County and Sheriff Joe Arpaio by a woman who said her brother’s death stemmed from a traumatic jail “dress out” – when he was held down, stripped and forced into the pink underwear of county inmates.
A divided panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also said a lower court could consider whether Arpaio’s pink-underwear policy for inmates amounts to “punishment without legal justification.”

Citing the high number of cross–border tunnels that pop up in Arizona and California, a House committee Tuesday passed a bill toughening laws against the use of tunnels for smuggling underneath the U.S.-Mexico border.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne joined other attorneys general Monday to criticize the Obama administration’s “unprecedented” overreach of federal authority that they said have led to a torrent of lawsuits over immigration, voting rights, health care and more.

Strong family ties, the cost of returning to their native countries and fewer economic opportunities back home have kept illegal immigrants in the U.S., despite strict immigration laws here, a new report claims.